IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Snow is BACK! Winter returns to parched Midwest; Time's "Person of the Year" promises action on climate change, but can he deliver?; Good and Bad 2012: top environmental stories of the year; PLUS: It's the end of the Mayan Apocalypse Myth as we know it! (And we feel fine) ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

While the heavy snow will create dangerous travel conditions, the .5" - 1.5" of melted water equivalent from the the storm will provide welcome moisture for drought-parched areas of the Midwest. Though much of the moisture will stay locked up as snow for the rest of the year, runoff from the storm may help keep Lake Michigan and Huron from setting an all-time record low for the month of December, and may also keep the Mississippi River at St. Louis above the -5' stage though the end of December. If the river falls below -5', barge traffic on the Mississippi may be forced to halt, costing billions of dollars.

Drought continued to expand through many key farming states within the central United States in the past week, as scattered rainfall failed to replenish parched soils, according to a report issued Thursday by state and federal climatology experts.

TIME's Person of the Year: Obama Again Promises Action on Climate Change:

During 2012, there were 11 extreme weather and climate events in the U.S. that reached the billion dollar threshold in losses, according to figures released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Thursday. While the total number of billion dollar natural disasters is down from 2011, when there were a record 14 events costing more than $60 billion, the economic losses this year are expected to exceed last year's tab, largely due to the massive economic toll caused by Hurricane Sandy and the widespread drought.

NASA said it has been flooded with calls and emails from people asking about the purported end of the world --- which, as the doomsday myth goes, is apparently set to take place Friday, Dec. 21. And the space agency has one simple response: "The world will not end in 2012."

Whenever we talk about pushing for 100% renewables, naysayers start arguing that we can never run our current economy without energy intensive fossil fuels. But they forget one simple thing: We don't have to.

In a world where you can address a conference from your own bedroom, or order your groceries or even publish a book without ever getting dressed, the old way of doing things just seems, well, increasingly old.

First, Ridley wrongly argues that three variables factored into current climate models are overstated (and thus that climate models are "unproven"). In fact, experts agree that the impacts of each variable that Ridley cites --- the cooling effect of aerosols (or particles in the air); the rate of heat absorption by the world's oceans; and the role of water vapor in amplifying climate change --- are unambiguous....

10 of the warmest Novembers have occurred in the past 12 years. The 10 coolest Novembers on record all occurred prior to 1920.
...
[T]he last cooler than average month globally occurred in February, 1985 (almost 28 years ago), "the year the hit film "Back to the Future" [the original, not the sequels] first hit theaters ...To put it another way, if you are under the age of 27, you have never experienced a month in which global average surface temperatures came in below the 20th century average," Freedman writes.

After 25 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to end its program of relocating the mammals, calling the effort a failure. Fishermen complain:

Federal officials turned Southern California into an "otter-free zone" in the late 1980s after moving 140 otters from Monterey Bay to San Nicolas Island, about 60 miles off the coast of Ventura County.

What seems increasingly important to understand, however, is that the need for international cooperation will be if anything more serious in a world that doesn't act to control emissions (or control emissions enough to prevent substantial warming).

The leak detection technology that will be used on the Keystone XL, for instance, is standard for the nation’s crude oil pipelines and rarely detects leaks smaller than 1 percent of the pipeline’s flow. The Keystone will have a capacity of 29 million gallons per day—so a spill would have to reach 294,000 gallons per day to trigger its leak detection technology.

As an electrical engineer myself, however, I didn’t understand how individuals trained in mathematics, science, and logic could fail to see glaring scientific, mathematical, physical, or logical flaws in their own arguments. Eventually, though, something clicked...

"Most of the fish that people in the U.S. eat are from the open ocean. And most of the mercury that goes into the open ocean is from atmospheric emissions, which comes from fossil fuel burning," says Chen, a food chain biologist from Dartmouth. Coal-fired power plants are the biggest source, globally.

[T]his isn't the overt, "bartering of government favors in return for private kickbacks" corruption. Instead, this type of corruption has actually been legalized. And it is strangling both US competitiveness, and the ability for US firms to innovate. The corruption to which I am referring is the phenomenon of money in politics.

Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

Human activity is affecting Earth in many ways, but a new study suggests that continued population growth and its impact on climate and ecology could trigger a more profound chain reaction of effects within little more than a decade.

Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.

It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels... "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

Warning: "Climate change is occurring … and poses significant risks to humans and the environment," reports the National Academy of Sciences. As climate-change science moves in one direction, Republicans in Congress are moving in another. Why?

A double-hulled oil tanker carrying 282,000 barrels of North Dakota crude oil — the first such shipment out of the Port of the Albany — ran aground Thursday morning on the Hudson River near Henry Hudson Park in Bethlehem, authorities said.

Thanks for the link, Dredd. Luckily, it appears at this time that the inner hull is intact and no oil is leaking. Blech

Also, the incident doesn't inspire confidence for this little sneaky proposal from pipeline company Enbridge (owners of the Kalamazoo River spill) to reverse the pipeline flow in Eastern Canada to ship those tar sands out of ports in Maine.http://ecowatch.org/2012...ine-communities-at-risk/

One of your articles is not true. Wind is not cheaper . Easily googled. Europe is not happy with the high cost and low output. Maine's electric bills have gone up 19% to pay for the new smart grid. They haven't even started building yet but our bills are higher. Wind from the new industrial wind farms operate at about 20% of the propaganda. And only then when the wind is blowing which is not when you need electricity.The power cannot be stored... Big Wind is notorious for paying environmentalists off for their support. Enough said.

Sorry, Dogboy #6, you missed it. We did report on that, back on Dec. 18th, in the segment "Climate Change Denial Industry steps on cartoon rake AGAIN"http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9787

You guys just can't help yourselves, can you? Here's a debunking by actual scientists, explaining that not only did the climate science denier who posted that get the science wrong, he apparently has problems with reading comprehension because the report does not say what he says it says. What's your excuse? Check out what actual scientists who actually know what they are talking about say about it (yes, they are laughing at you):http://mediamatters.org/...-medias-spin-on-l/191953

Molly, you've made it abundantly clear here that you hate wind power for some reason. Strict rules and regulations should be implemented to govern the siting of wind turbines far away from residences. Otherwise, wind is far cheaper than all fossil fuels when the external costs of oil, coal and natural gas are factored in --- as you well know by now, you, the taxpayer, foot the bill in cleanup and health care costs.... and you, your children and grandchildren will pay the intangible costs of the loss of clean air, water, soil and a stable climate.